The Death Riders

CHAPTER ONE

THE LONE WOLF

A red moon hung over the Rio Grande. In its baleful rays the Great River was a stream of sluggish blood flowing between banks of jet. Far to the north-west the Guadalupes loomed massively against a blue-black sky silver-spangled with stars, a mighty fortress of the half-gods built to withstand the assaults of titans in the days when there were giants in the land and the half-gods made war on men. Nearer, to the west, were jagged broken hills standing north-eastward and fanging far to the south, slashing the desert with their iron claws.

East and west stretched the desert, a purple mystery flecked with silver-ash, whispering and murmuring in the wind as sand particle nestled against sand particle or caressed the weird spires of chimney rocks and buttes with tireless finger, carving the iron-hard granite into grotesque shapes and patterns. Cholla cactuses stood gaunt and menacing, brandishing twisted, deformed arms like truculent devils. Mesquite thickets, grease-wood, sage, with here and there a grove of cottonwoods where a spring welled forth from the thirsty sands and fed a little stream that soon lost itself in the reaches of parched desolation.

Edging the grey garment of the desert with emerald and amethyst was the rangeland, stretching north beyond the skyline like the waves of a sea, frozen at the crest of their swell.

And above all the vast inverted bowl of the sky with its countless stars and a red, red moon looking down with a bloody eye.

Faint with distance sounded the mournful, beautiful plaint of a hunting wolf. A weird, whickering cry answered the call from where an owl perched on the topmost limb of a blasted pine. Then for a long time the sharp edge of the silence was blunted only by the eerie whisper of the wind-drifted sands.

Gradually another sound became apparent, a muffled rhythmic clicking that steadily increased in volume. It swelled to a systematic patter, a monotonous thudding — pouring along the grey ribbon of a trail that writhed out of the west, flanked by mesquite and chimney rock, with the ash and purple vastness of the desert to the south and the distant swell of the rangeland on the north.

Around a bend in the moon-drenched trail flickered shadows. They resolved into mounted men, a full dozen or more of them, who swept eastward, riding with loose rein, glancing neither to right nor left, hatbrims drawn low, faces muffled in handkerchiefs looped high about their throats. The ghastly horsemen bulged past a shoulder of chimney rock and vanished around a second bend perhaps five hundred yards distant from where they had burst into view. The thudding died to a patter, a clicking, a whisper scarce louder than that of the sands, and ceased.

Again the silence was unbroken; but not for long. A clicking different from the multiple beat of more than twoscore hoofs vibrated the air. Like the first, it grew in volume, but at a slower rate. Another moment and a lone rider appeared, looming gigantic in the deceptive light that shimmered to reddish bronze the coat of the magnificent golden sorrel he bestrode. Lounging easily in the saddle, he rode past the bulge of chimney rock and towards the second bend in the trail.

But unlike the speeding group that preceded him, he continually glanced right and left, searched the trail ahead with a probing gaze, turned to look over his shoulder. As he neared the bend, his glance concentrated on the black curve of mesquite which walled it in. Abruptly he stiffened in the saddle, muscles tensed for dynamic action.

And at that instant, reddish flame gushed from the dense bristle of growth at the bend. The report of a shot rang like thunder and echoed back and forth from spire to butte.

The tall rider of the golden horse, who had been swaying sideways the instant the gun cracked, threw up both hands and pitched from the saddle, to lie, apparently a limp and lifeless form, undiscernible in the black shadow that edged the trail.

But even as he fell, seemingly helpless, one sinewy hand jerked a heavy Winchester rifle from the saddle boot. As he hit the ground he shot a low-voiced command to the horse:

‘Hold it, Goldy!’

The yellow horse stood motionless, ears pricked forward inquiringly. His rider lay, apparently, where he had fallen. In reality, he had writhed sideways several feet farther into the shadow.

For long minutes the tableau held. The golden horse continued to peer towards the bend in the trail. From the shadows beside him came no sound or motion. The horse flicked his tail, and pawed questioningly with a front foot.

‘Steady!’ cautioned an almost inaudible whisper from the shadows. ‘Steady, feller; that dry-gulching sidewinder will be coming to see if he did a finish job, or my name’s not Jim Hatfield! Steady!’

The horse remained motionless, the silence unbroken. The sullen moon climbed higher into the sky, the band of shadow beside the trail narrowed.

It was the faint snap of a breaking twig that warned Hatfield of danger from an unexpected quarter. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw two shadow forms just emerging from the mesquite behind him. Noiselessly he writhed about, cuddling the stock of the Winchester against his cheek.

The two forms advanced stealthily towards him. He could catch the glint of moonlight on the guns they held. He shifted the muzzle of the rifle to bear directly on the leading figure. But just as his finger began tightening on the trigger, a vagrant beam of moonlight fell full on the face of the leading man and what he saw so startled Hatfield that for an instant he held his fire.

The moonlight, reddish, eerie, beat not upon a human face, but upon a fleshless skull — cavernous eye-holes, grinning teeth, noseless cavity! It was a grisly death’s-head that topped the tall and broad-shouldered form that advanced with furtive but purposeful step.

But if the thing that stole towards him was featureless, it certainly was not voiceless. For at that moment it let out a warning bellow:

‘Look out! He ain’t dead!’

Jerked out of his trance of astonishment, Hatfield fired. He saw the death’s-head reel back, heard his yell of pain that was healthily human. A wild dive sideways and the two forms vanished in the growth. Hatfield sent a stream of lead hissing after them, and was rewarded by a wild crashing as the pair tore through the mesquite in headlong flight.

Hatfield leaped to his feet, scudded along through the shadow, and paused where the smashed branches showed where the pair had taken to cover. He could see nothing, but his ears told him that both of the dry-gulchers were on their feet and hightailing it away from there.

Abruptly the sound ceased. Hatfield crouched low, rifle at the ready, peering and listening. Another moment of silence, then to his ear came the sound of fast hoofs fading into the distance.

Hatfield debated whether to mount and race in pursuit, but that ominous bend in the trail ahead made him hesitate. He had no way of knowing whether the grim pair he had seen were the whole of the dry-gulching pack. If others were holed up beyond the bend, he stood a good chance of leaning against the hot end of a bullet if he rounded it recklessly. On noiseless feet he turned and stole back the way he had come, keeping in the shadow, careful to avoid the slightest sound.

He reached the bend, slipped into the growth and wormed his way along, stopping every moment or two to peer and listen. The silence remained unbroken save for the chirp of a sleepy bird in the growth ahead. A moment later the furtive form of a rodent slid across the trail a dozen yards in front and vanished into the mesquite.

‘That feller wouldn’t have gone in there if anybody was holed up in the brush,’ Hatfield told himself. He straightened up and stepped boldly on to the moonlit trail. Nothing happened. Mechanically he refilled the magazine of his rifle with fresh cartridges. For a moment he stood staring eastward.

‘The same thing saved him that saved me a minute before — moonlight glinting on my rifle barrel when I shifted it,’ he mused, apropos of the vanished dry-gulcher. ‘If I hadn’t seen that mite of a gleam at the edge of the brush ahead, he’d have drilled me dead center. Came mighty close as it was — I felt the wind of the slug as it went past. Well, this is a nice reception for a gent ridin’ into a section peaceable like! What sort of a jigger was that I lined sights with, anyhow? Looked like something that had just climbed out of a grave after spending a long time there! Captain McDowell wrote me funny things were happening hereabouts and would stand a little Ranger investigating, but it looks like he doesn’t know the half of it. Looks like I might be in for a sorta interesting time.’

Most folks might reason that what had just occurred was a mite too interesting for comfort, but there was a pleased expression in the long green eyes of the man a grim old Lieutenant of Rangers had named the Lone Wolf.

CHAPTER TWO

FIERY DEATH

Hatfield covered perhaps a mile, riding at a swift easy pace. The moon was almost to the zenith now and had lost some of its reddish hue. But still the hot haze shrouded the sky and the light filtering through it was eerie and unreal.

The mesquite that flanked the trail was thinning somewhat. Abruptly it fell back for some hundreds of yards and Hatfield had a clear view ahead. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation.

A reddish, flickering glow was climbing up the eastern sky a little to the north of the trail. An instant later he heard, thin with distance, like the crackling of thorns under a pot, a stutter of shots.

‘Now what?’ he muttered, peering at the angry sky. The glow was growing more fiery. It flickered and wavered, climbed higher. Hatfield spoke to his horse.

‘Something off color going on over there, or I’m a heap mistook,’ he muttered. ‘Trail, Goldy!’

The sorrel lengthened his stride. The rhythmic beat of his irons quickened. Hatfield leaned forward in the saddle, alert and watchful.

The mesquite was crawling back towards the trail which had veered to the north, away from the desert. Soon it crowded close, a dark bristle rising above the head of the mounted man. He could catch only occasional glimpses of the sky ahead in which the fiery glow persisted.

The trail began to curve in a gradual sweep that veered it more and more to the north. The mesquite growth thinned to a straggle, then ceased altogether. Goldy flickered past the last tangled bush, and ahead was open rangeland, softened and mellowed by the flooding moonlight. And set a few hundred yards to the side of the trail and perhaps a half mile ahead was a ranchhouse, a barn and other buildings. The roof of the barn was a mass of flames and the whole lower portion of the ranchhouse was shrouded in fire that shot angry tongues through rolling clouds of smoke.

Hatfield leaned forward tensely, spoke urgently to the racing horse, who increased his speed even more. That something was very wrong ahead was apparent, for